Digital Thursday: kinetic energy

I've got a folder full of digital sketches I can share from time to time. Its fun to make these because as a painter, its very difficult to produce neon-effects on a dark background. After stamping a group of neon-green rectangles onto a black background I was stumped for awhile, then came about the textural grid. Surprisingly, the grid took on a glow of its own, and I finished with reflective elements. 

Neon interior structure, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

After making a group of purple pastel brush strokes I left this one for awhile. Trying a few things, I drew lines over top using the 'multiply' function where colours turn "tye-dye" hippy when they overlap. The shapes were drawn not stamped. By draw, I mean with my finger on a cell-phone screen.  

Scintillation exposure, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

The idea here was to stamp every textural feature in the app! Varying from white to black gave a volume feeling, and I spray painted areas for a complete explosion/smoke image. It would be cool to animate this one, but I am not sure how. 

Snap explosion, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

Watching the 'Great Baking Show' and we see them making mirror glazes and dragging a toothpick across to create that rippled-effect on cakes. I went for that in the background using smear tools, then overlapped squiggly lines with an eye-pleasing yellow red and green combo. 

Mirror glaze, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

Whatever was in the background I didn't like, so I smeared it out, then drew my initials with a highlighter pen, actually the neon tool. Some brushes do not completely cover the background, so they look transparent. Most tools have that as a feature you can adjust, its called 'opacity'. 

Highlighter smear PJD, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000 

Looking back: London Ontario

As I am painting on the backs of old paintings for awhile, some of the art is neat to 'look back' onto from my perspective after ~25 years has passed. This scene was done on a hiking trip around Fanshawe lake, London Ontario, you see a sail boat out there on the small lake, with rolling hills in the background. It was overcast that day, and I did a good job getting the correct shade of purple-grey on the water surface. I even see some cloud reflections in the water. 

Fanshawe lake sailboat, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, ~2000

Even back then, I had an eye for graffiti, here is a scribble on a structure in the middle of a parking lot that I changed to my initials PD. It was probably done some time between 2000 - 2002, I can only guess based on how I painted the sky and how much cerulean blue is in the mixtures. 

Graffiti parking lot, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, ~2000

Here is a tricky back-lit scene of the Thames river and its concrete embankments. Even today I could not do much better than this, although I would have cleaned up the edges, and got some more detail on the tree. For the blog, I cropped the paintings to make them look neater, I had a bad habit of painting the edges crooked. 

Thames river embankment, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, ~2000

I seem to remember this as being one of the last paintings I did in London Ontario, which puts it at 2004, and I can tell from the lack of cerulean blue in the shadows. I realized the cerulean blue was making a muddy mess of my shadows mixes and stopped using it altogether. In retrospect, shadows do not really contain any blue reflectance unless the surface is white or near-white, and the sky is blue.  I wrote a blog called the myth of blue shadows in 2020 when I realized this useful fact. 

Red and yellow tulips, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, ~2000

Old factory graffiti corner

This massive old factory downtown must have made some serious stuff back in the day but I could not find any information on it on the internet. Now its a collection of warehousing and maybe living space. Looking way up, there was a door and window, suggesting a conveyor system was once there. I would guess steel industry perhaps. 

Old factory looking up, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Down at street level, the walls are covered in large street art, as seen behind three bins, blue and green. In the background, lights are on inside, so it must be in use for something. 

Blue green bins PJD, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

A tour bus was parked back here, likely related to the Jazz fest which started today. I rode by but there were throngs of people and I was not prepared for walking and painting. Need my shoulder bag for that, and then park the bike. On the right you see the elaborately painted wall of the factory. As little as 3 or 4 years ago these walls were all clean brick. Now they are painted black and plastered with art.

Tour bus graff walls, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

Old facotry district, China town storefronts

Near the Canadian Maltage factory which is still operational, its the business with 'Farine Five Roses' sign on top, there are a few closed warehouses. The one in this painting used to deal in something related to boats, maybe anchors or parts. Up in the background is part of the lengthy grain elevator that transports malt around for making beer ingredients. Beer starts here!

Closed warerhouse grain elevator, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, June 2026

The wall towards the right of this painting is stone covered in plaster. The plaster is falling away in big chunks revelaing old stacked-stones underneath. A large gear sits on the other side, and some other gear-decorations are attached to a door, although the structure has no roof or anything inside of it. I imagine it used to make giant iron gears for boats or factories. 

Old gear wall, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

An old warehouse with iron siding is buckling and rusting. To create the effect required at least five layers. First a moist wash with the shadows from a nearby tree, then contour lines for buckling siding, followed by a rusty orange glaze leaving space for graffiti. Then graffiti, with additional detailing over top to complete the effect. It was an immensely complicated procedure to pull off on location, but it worked out all right. As usual I replaced the graffiti with my own initials. 

Buckling graff wall, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Switching over to China town, here is a small shop on the corner of Clarke street, its a Chinese tea house called Specialtea. Several signs adorn the front, listing off products for sale. If I didn't already have so much tea I might have gone in to see what they have. 

Chinese tea house, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Over on st Laurent  street there is a small clothing store called Nice & Mode although all the signs were in Chinese writing. I found out the name in English on google maps. Racks of clothes for sale were out on the narrow sidewalk. I changed the Chinese symbols into patterns that resembled my initials and 26. Since about 2018 I marked my paintings with the year so as to help organize them.  Its been close to 5000 paintings completed just since 2020, a few thousand before that. I will update my catalogue soon as we reach halfway through the year. 

Nice & Mode clothing, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Walking my bike down st Laurent brought me past small shops and restaurants including this interesting looking noodle shop. Its called Nouilles de Lan Zhou. People were waiting to get in, I just set up my bike on the sidewalk and started painting. Inside, there is a staircase going down to a take-out counter, you see the bright yellow and blue of a TV screen showing a menu. Upstairs was a sit-down restaurant, presumably where Lan Zhou was serving their noodles were. I could have used a bigger piece of paper to do this one, maybe I will try it again, and get some famous noodles next time!

Nouilles de Lan Zhou interior, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

Setting up Festival International de Jazz de Montréal

With Jazz fest set to kick off tomorrow (June 25th) it was pretty quiet down there today and I could make a few paintings of the setup. Here is a tent, with the main buildings in the background. On the right edge of the painting is part of a stage. 

Plsce des arts tent setup, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

The bins are colourful this year, yellow, green, and blue, along with bright red planter pots. There was an orange pylon visible that I left out of the composition. A painting like this needs a decent outline, its more of an illustration, followed by paint-by-numbers. 

Yellow green blue top bins, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

You only had one job to do... paint a perfect circle! Its harder than it seems especially with beat up old brushes. The sphere and purple pedestal are part of Jazz fest decoration, while the cop cars are always parked around here because there is a station down the street. I tried really hard to make the cop car look accurate.  

Sphere cruiser, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

 

On Benny avenue there is a small park called Parc Herbert-Outerbridge where the old library used to be located, you can see part of it in the background of this painting, a beige building with arched doorways. I liked the shape of the paths. This one was done yesterday but I forgot to scan in, it was in the pile. I also liked the garbage can in the foreground, its an old metal basket one with a black garbage bag.  Orange pine needles were on the ground, in fact, I was standing under pine trees on a soft bed of pine needles. 

Parc Herbert-Outerbridge path, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026  

Benny avenue scenes

This big tree had an interesting variety of textures and colours. Streaks of orange and green represent mosses, and the pale beige reflected yellow and purple tones. In the background are some of the Benny apartments and the big one down on Sherbrooke. Benny is the name of a farm that turned into housing, Sports complex, and library. 

Tree apartments Benny, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Sitting on the same rock, I made another painting looking towards the rear of Benny library. The cladding is a red-maroon colour I mixed with perylene maroon (PR179) amd quin violet (PV55). The pale blue on top of the library is called periwinkle blue... a kind of pastel powder blue I make with phthalo blue sapphire (PB15), a touch of magenta (PR122), and dilute with water. 

Benny library rear, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

Down closer to the train tracks, there is an active auto shop. They were working on an SUV inside, and a grey Porsche was waiting for repairs. Those sports cars must really break down, I saw a busted Ferrari the other day. 

Auto Benny, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

As the commuter train rumbled by, I made a painting of the scene, including two signs, and plenty of greenery. A small gap made the train visible, I could see the track, gravel, and the train zooming past. 

Train signs, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026

On the same corner, here is an old building with a pale green roof. I painted this scene back in 2019 when a large tree was growing here, which was since cut down. They replanted a smaller tree which is going well. The background came out surprisingly realistic. It was good to make some paintings with nice weather, its been mostly rain the last week or so. 

Pale green roof path, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, June 2026 

Digital slices, selfie dimensions

Using Sketchbook app, here is a citrus-themed digital piece, using all the colours I can only make digitally. With real paint, it is not possible to create such vibrant cyan, magenta, and chartreuse colours, although the yellow is possible. 

Citrus slices, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000

 

Waiting for a meeting, I took a picture of my computer and made some fantastic overlays. Its how I feel sometimes staring at my computer in the office. 

Cpmputer surprises, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000
 

Taking a selfie, then applying semi-transparent paint splatters, I created a twilight zone effect with starts and celestial details. 

Selfie paint splatters, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000
 

Here is a picture of my left hand, over-painted with neon tools and a magnetic-field all around. Its like magic, when you make digital art, electricity emanates from finger tips. 

Electric neon hand, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000
 

I started with a colourful background, then made concentric rectangles, followed by square stamp overlays. Varying the size of the stamps created a sense of dimensional depth. 

Boxes dimensions, Sketchbook, digital 1600 x 2000